


Who Wants to Live Forever

by SonjaJade



Series: Poppies for Sango [2]
Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-15
Updated: 2012-06-15
Packaged: 2017-11-07 19:42:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/434659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonjaJade/pseuds/SonjaJade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kagome is growing old and closing in on death, and she struggles to understand InuYasha's definition of forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Wants to Live Forever

Lyrics to _Who Wants to Live Forever?_ Property of Queen

There's no chance for us,  
It's all decided for us.  
This world has only one sweet moment set aside for us.

Who wants to live forever?  
Who wants to live forever?  
Who dares to love forever?  
When love must die…

* * *

They sat beneath the sacred Tree of Ages, Goshinboku. It was the single place in the whole existence of time and space that they both felt almost at nirvana. It was the place they'd first met, the place where they shared those first feelings of admiration for each other, the place where he gave her their first tender kiss, as well as their first passionate one. He had asked her to marry him here, and then marked and deflowered her at its roots. Their first litter of pups had been conceived here, her last one birthed here. It was the binding axel of all their shared memories together. No matter how far across time they had been, or how far across the wilds of Japan they'd traveled, this one tree, resolute and unwavering, was always at the heart of it all.

He held her to his body, seemingly locked forever in youth. She had now seen thirty nine summers come and go in Edo. Her fifty-seven year old frame was worn and tired. Her children were nearly all grown now, all eleven of them. Only the last two remained at home, and they would be leaving at harvest to join Sesshomaru's son and Shippo at the Northern border to assist with the war between the wolf tribes. Kagome sighed and pulled her shawl around her as an unseasonably cool wind breezed through her miko top. InuYasha held her a little closer and kissed the top of her head, which was now more silver than black.

When InuYasha was young and immature, he always felt this fear in his mind about taking the woman beside him as his mate. He knew their life spans were drastically different in length, and no matter how much he desired for her to at least be a half demon like himself or for him to be a human like her, the change they both wanted so badly was never going to happen. And what was he supposed to do with how he felt about her? He certainly couldn't throw the love he had for her away, simply because she would never live as long as he would. How cruel would it be to constantly tell themselves they couldn't be with one another simply because of the short time they would have together… It was unfathomable to bury something so true and beautiful as genuine love for such a stupid reason. So he grew and matured in the wake of her three year absence, realized this error of his childish ways and often wondered if that was the reason they'd been separated; to give them time to consider if their much too short union was worth the pain it would no doubt later bring. InuYasha decided his life would be worthless without her, even if she was only there for the equivalent of a moment. He needed her in his world, no matter how long or short she could be in it with him.

Kagome never gave a thought to her own humanity. She loved InuYasha without the burden of how young he would look when she would die, old and wrinkled beyond recognition. She never once thought about giving him up in order to find someone more human. She loved him because of his humanness within his half yokai body. She couldn't find another person on this earth more worthy of her affections than him. Loving her mate and husband had never been thought of as a mistake.

She turned to look at him and smiled, half of her teeth now missing as well. "InuYasha, I fear my time is growing short. Surely I couldn't have too many more years left in this worn out baby making machine."

"Keh, you've got plenty of time left. If your blood hadn't stopped coming you'd be knocked up now." His clawed hand ran possessively over her sagging breasts, disregarding her grimace of disdain for her own body. "Lose that look, miko. You're still my beautiful mate."

Kagome certainly didn't feel beautiful. Her velvety brown eyes had faded, her silky raven locks had turned mostly silver and had grown wiry, her thin and agile frame had widened with burden of motherhood and she had packed on a bit of weight. Her once large and perky breasts now looked deflated and saggy, and so did pretty much everything else. Skin hung droopy from her arms, lines covered her everywhere else… "I don't know how you can say that with a straight face."

"I can say that because what you refer to as "this pile of mush" is only what covers the beautiful woman I took under this tree almost forty years ago. You are still my beautiful Kagome inside, and your beauty resonates through you and makes your outside beautiful too." He gently pulled on her braided ponytail and kissed her weathered neck. "And you can't deny you don't want this." He could play her like a flute.

Kagome swam back from the delirium his touch cause and gently made him stop. "InuYasha…" She looked at the ground, eyes in tears. "I… I'm afraid to die."

He leaned back from her, his golden eyes regarding her quietly. "Why now all the sudden? You used to tell me it never bothered you." He wrapped his arms around her large waist. She was undone by his sweet gesture of comfort and fell apart. Her body wracked with sobs that he couldn't stop, no matter how tight he held her. Whatever was bothering her was going to have to come out on _her_ time. As the minutes blew past them, she finally quieted and he asked her, "Tell me what's gotten your brain so stirred up."

"I don't want to leave you. I don't want to leave my kids. Funny as it sounds I knew I would never be able to live with you forever, and now that there's nothing I can do about it and my end is closing in, I've never wanted 'forever' so badly." She began to cry again. "My children will outlive me by hundreds of years, and you will outlive them by hundreds of years. I can't bear the thought of you being all alone when we're all gone, pining away for all of us by yourself."

He giggled into the crown of her head as he ran his hand lovingly up and down her soft jiggly arm. "Sesshomaru will be around, Kagura and their clan. I won't be alone. And besides, we knew this very fate was going to befall us one day anyway. Don't act like this is some kind of new development." He gently wiped her face. "Time is something we didn't have the luxury of. But we have packed what little time we have had with as much love and laughter as possible, don't ya think?" She nodded against his shoulder, still oozing tears. "We will always be together forever. Whether you or me either one die right this moment, our love will remain no matter what. It will be felt on the wind, in the sunshine, in every raindrop that falls to the ground. We didn't let 500 years separate us before, and when I finally meet my end we'll continue on as if we never parted. Just like when you came home to stay with me."

He pushed her top to one side and moved the shawl aside, and he gazed at the mark he'd placed on her a week after she returned. It was faded and healed up, but the scar left behind was a testament to their unending dedication to one another.

"Kagome, you touched my heart in a way that no one, not even Kikyo could have. You helped me to grow into a man. You blessed me with five sons and seven daughters and taught me the value of family as I had never known it before. You enrich my existence with everything that you are. Even in this short span of years, I have lived more than I could ever hope to. You and me will always have forever." He kissed her wrinkled lips. "Forever and ever."

"Mama! Pops!" It was their eldest's voice, Tsukiko. She stood tall and willowy, a near carbon copy of Sesshomaru. "Where are you!"

"Come on Kagome, let's go meet our first grandchildren." He got to his feet and gently pulled her to hers, offering her his arm to help her to the clearing. "Coming Tsuki! Just a second!" he hollered in response. "Just remember," he whispered into her ear as he kissed her cheek, "no matter what, we always have forever. And when we come together in heaven we'll have longer than that."

They ambled slowly to where their first born stood, and she embraced her aging mother and her father who could have passed for her younger brother. She led them back to their modest home at the foot of the hill, where Tsukiko's sons lay in a basket on the floor. Her husband was already at the northern front with Sesshomaru, a captain in his army there. These children had lost most of their demon bloodlines, as Tsukiko was three quarters human and her husband was human. These boys had raven hair and brown eyes, just like Kagome. Then Kagome realized something. No matter how watered down it would eventually become, her blood coursed through the veins of her grandsons, and then it would course through their children, and so on. She really did have forever, and she really would have it with InuYasha. And she knew that eventually when he did meet his end, they would reunite once more at the border of heaven, and would have forever once more.

Kagome lived on for another three years. She had taken a bad chest cold, she suspected it was pneumonia. She coughed and hacked and just could not get enough air into her lungs. She did everything she knew to do with medicines and treatments, but it was to no avail. She died gurgling on her own phlegm as InuYasha held her upright in their bed. Tears coursed down his face endlessly as her death rattle neared its worst, pained that she was suffering in such a way. When she finally stopped breathing, he wiped his face and wrapped her lovingly in the sheet she'd been lying in, kissed her slacked face one last time, and laid her on the pyre her sons had built for her, and they burned her body as her soul left on its way to heaven.

And then she was aware of her surroundings and she found herself at the border of heaven, on a flowery hill under a plum tree, looking just as she did the day InuYasha marked her. In fact, her mating mark was quite fresh again. Her body was young and firm and tight as it once had been, and she sat quietly under the tree looking out into the expanse of eternity. There was a light breeze, and then she heard him walking behind her.

"InuYasha?" The footsteps stopped.

"The one and only," he grinned.

"But I only just got here… you didn't do something stupid did you?" She rose and turned to face him. He looked the same as when she last saw him, which felt like ten minutes ago.

He laughed. "Kagome, it's been almost four hundred and thirty years since you died." She gasped in shock. "I actually went and saw you as an infant at the hospital. You were as beautiful a child as any of the ones you've given me."

She stared at her drawn up knees as he sat down next to her. "That can't be InuYasha, I literally just got here."

"Kagome, I never lied to you about anything, why would I start now?"

She looked at him speechlessly as he gathered her up into his arms. She leaned into his chest and just breathed his unique smell, glad in many ways that she didn't have to wait long for him. Finally she looked up through her jet black bangs and said, "How'd it happen?"

He smiled. "You're gonna laugh so hard. But it really was tragic…" He looked into her sad eyes and said, "I was drinking, quite heavily one night there in Tokyo. I had wandered a bit too far in some direction or another and I stopped to take a leak. Too bad I pissed directly on a hot subway rail and fried myself from the inside out. I thought I heard Miroku laughing as I realized I was dying."

Electrocuted. Painful, but quick. And all because he had to relieve his bladder on a hot rail in his drunken stupor. She chuckled a little. "Why were you drinking so hard?"

His gaze moved to the expanse of eternity. They'd been here before, back when Miroku and Sango had been through that horrible fate with Buddha and the time warp… "Because I missed you. It was your first birthday. I found your mother one day and offered to come to your birthday party as a clown to entertain you and your little baby friends. I spent hours with you as an infant. I finally told myself I had to leave or else they might call the cops thinking I'm a child molester. I went back to my shitty little apartment and scrounged up all the money I could find and spent it all on whiskey. I drank and wandered all night long. It was a wonder I didn't get arrested for public intoxication." He sighed. "I didn't mean to kill myself, I knew you wouldn't be happy with me if I'd done that, despite how bad I wanted to."

Kagome hugged his chest. "What did you do in all that time I was gone?"

He rubbed her back with his hands, reveling in the feel of her again. "I spent most of my time following Sesshomaru around. I'd check up on Sango and Miroku's clan sometimes, their great-great grandson turned out to be a big deal, some general in the first military force of the Edo period."

"And what of our clan? What of our children?" Her voice wavered a little, the thought of her babies dying.

"You would have been proud of our sons. They died fighting alongside Sesshomaru and myself, and Shippo and his sons… Ashoka was the last to go, and he dealt the death blow to the panther demon tribe's commanding officer. Goddamned guns… Had it been a sword to sword battle he would have lived. Fucking cat had a pistol hiding on him. Just as Ashoka ran him through and gutted him the bastard shot him in the face."

Kagome closed her eyes, but no tears came. She felt oddly at peace that his death had been nearly instant as well as courageous. "They all died in the same battle?"

InuYasha sighed unhappily. "Yeah. We lost many humans, the panthers were just too strong. And my demon blood in my boys wasn't enough to keep them alive. Sesshomaru's boy was nearly killed as well, lost one of his eyes. I'm glad you missed it. That was the most brutal war I've ever seen, mostly because so many of the lives lost were so close to my heart. Tsukiko's husband was killed almost immediately, very early in the battle. The thing that ended the siege was when Shinju and Izumi came riding in on Kirara with their hands full of dynamite. Shinju lit them and Izumi threw them, the two of them attacked our enemy from the air and caught them off guard. It was enough for our ground troops to overtake them."

"And what of my girls?" she asked as she gazed out into the valley of heaven before her, wondering why she hadn't seem them if they had died before her mate.

"They all lived to be round and fat and wrinkly and happy, and died of peaceful old age." He kissed the top of her head. "And the grandchildren were so many that I had a hard time keeping track of them. Let's see…" he started counting on his fingers how many grandchildren there were. "There were at least fifty. Probably more than that but no more than seventy."

Kagome's mouth dropped. "Seventy? I had seventy grandchildren?"

"Well, probably closer to sixty."

"My goodness…"

He smiled large. "Want to guess how many great grandchildren there were?"

She shook her head, "I don't think I could ever calculate it… Math was always my weakness."

"I only remember because it was an easy number to remember. Two hundred and fifty."

She stared at him in shock. "You're kidding! Jeeze, no wonder Tokyo was so crowded in the modern era, my eleven children populated it!" She felt him chuckle deep in his strong chest. It was such a soothing feeling; finally back in the arms of her beloved.

"Well, this is it Kagome. Now we've got eternity." He stood and helped her to her feet. "What do you want to do first?" Her face reddened. "My beautiful mate, what has caused that lovely flush of crimson in your face?"

She looked at him sweetly, "I don't think what I want to do with you is very angelic. I don't know if it's even permissible here."

He bent and kissed her deeply under the plum tree. She wrapped her strong and youthful arms around his neck and pressed her body to his. It was dizzying, the way his kisses had always affected her. He pulled away from her warm lips. "This is our eternity my love, we can do whatever we wish, even that, and forever if that's what you want."

"Forever?" she breathed against his cheek as her hands gathered fistfuls of his haori.

"Forever."

* * *

But touch my tears with your lips  
Touch my world with your fingertips  
And we can have forever  
And we can love forever  
Forever is our today


End file.
